By Maria Sherman
Associated Press
(AP) – On Saturday night, Kiss closed out the final performance of their âThe End of the Roadâ farewell tour at New York Cityâs famed Madison Square Garden.
But as dedicated fans surely know â they were never going to call it quits. Not really.
During their encore, the bandâs current lineup â founders Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons as well as guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer â left the stage to reveal digital avatars of themselves. After the transformation, the virtual Kiss launched into a performance of âGod Gave Rock and Roll to You.â
The cutting-edge technology was used to tease a new chapter of the rock band: after 50 years of Kiss, the band is now interested in a kind of digital immortality.
The avatars were created by George Lucasâ special-effects company, Industrial Light & Magic, in partnership with Pophouse Entertainment Group, the latter of which was co-founded by ABBAâs Björn Ulvaeus. The two companies recently teamed up for the âABBA Voyageâ show in London, in which fans could attend a full concert by the Swedish band â as performed by their digital avatars.
Per Sundin, CEO of Pophouse Entertainment, says this new technology allows Kiss to continue their legacy for âeternity.â He says the band wasnât on stage during virtual performance because âthatâs the key thing,â of the future-seeking technology. âKiss could have a concert in three cities in the same night across three different continents. Thatâs what you could do with this.â
In order to create their digital avatars, who are depicted as a kind of superhero version of the band, Kiss performed in motion capture suits.
Experimentation with this kind of technology has become increasingly common in certain sections of the music industry. In October K-pop star Mark Tuan partnered with Soul Machines to create an autonomously automated âdigital twinâ called âDigital Mark.â In doing so, Tuan became the first celebrity to attach their likeness to OpenAIâs GPT integration, artificial intelligence technology that allows fans to engage in one-on-one conversations with Tuanâs avatar.
Aespa, the K-pop girl group, frequently perform alongside their digital avatars â the quartet is meant to be viewed as an octet with digital twins. Another girl group, Eternity, is made up entirely of virtual characters â no humans necessary.
